The Penguin Book of Irish Poetry

by Patrick Crotty (ed)

  What we should do. He said: Take the ferry

  Faute de mieux. We flicked the flashlight

  And there was the ferryman just as Virgil

  And Dante had seen him. He looked at us coldly

  And his eyes were dead and his hands on the oar

  Were black with obols and varicose veins

  Marbled his calves and he said to us coldly:

  If you want to die you will have to pay for it.

  The Introduction

  They were introduced in a grave glade

  And she frightened him because she was young

  And thus too late. Crawly crawly

  Went the twigs above their heads and beneath

  The grass beneath their feet the larvae

  Split themselves laughing. Crawly crawly

  Went the cloud above the treetops reaching

  For a sun that lacked the nerve to set

  And he frightened her because he was old

  And thus too early. Crawly crawly

  Went the string quartet that was tuning up

  In the back of the mind. You two should have met

  Long since, he said, or else not now.

  The string quartet in the back of the mind

  Was all tuned up with nowhere to go.

  They were introduced in a green grave.

  W. R. RODGERS

  (1909–69)

  The Net

  Quick, woman, in your net

  Catch the silver I fling!

  O I am deep in your debt,

  Draw tight, skin-tight, the string,

  And rake the silver in.

  No fisher ever yet

  Drew such a cunning ring.

  Ah, shifty as the fin

  Of any fish this flesh

  That, shaken to the shin,

  Now shoals into your mesh,

  Bursting to be held in;

  Purse-proud and pebble-hard,

  Its pence like shingle showered.

  Open the haul, and shake

  The fill of shillings free,

  Let all the satchels break

  And leap about the knee

  In shoals of ecstasy.

  Guineas and gills will flake

  At each gull-plunge of me.

  Though all the Angels, and

  Saint Michael at their head,

  Nightly contrive to stand

  On guard about your bed,

  Yet none dare take a hand,

  But each can only spread

  His eagle-eye instead.

  But I, being man, can kiss

  And bed-spread-eagle too;

  All flesh shall come to this,

  Being less than angel is,

  Yet higher far in bliss

  As it entwines with you.

  Come, make no sound, my sweet;

  Turn down the candid lamp

  And draw the equal quilt

  Over our naked guilt.

  MÁIRTÍN Ó DIREÁIN

  (1910–88)

  End of an Era

  My grief on the men of the stories

  And the death that fells them!

  The shawled women following

  And I still alive

  Anonymous amid the throng,

  Without ‘Who’s he?’ on their lips

  Or knowledge of my surname.

  Never again will I try

  To press friendship on grey stones!

  There’s no welcome for me on the rock,

  Hunting my youth on the way

  Like Oisín on the crags,

  Nor again along the foreshore

  Lamenting the host of the dead.

  PC

  Sunday Memory

  I see the Sunday sun beating

  Down on the face of the ground

  In the beloved island all afternoon;

  Much stone, little clay

  That’s the bleak island’s testimony,

  The wretched inheritance of my people.

  I see how the stone has cast each man,

  And bruised him into its own shape.

  And I see the crowd who forsook forever

  Stone and clay and wretched inheritance,

  And I see too each put-upon mother

  Composing her brood like a poem to memorize.

  PC

  Strong Beams

  Stand your ground, soul:

  Hold fast to everything that’s rooted,

  And don’t react like some pubescent boy

  When your friends let you down.

  Often you’ve seen a redshank

  Lonely on a wet rock;

  If he won no spoil from the wave

  That was no cause for complaint.

  You brought from your dark kingdom

  No lucky caul on your head

  But protective beams were placed

  Firmly round your cradle.

  Withered beams they placed round you,

  Iron tongs above you,

  A piece of your father’s clothes beside you

  And a poker in the fire below.

  Put your weight to your strong oar-beams

  Against neap-tide and low water;

  Preserve the spark of your vision –

  Lose that and you’re finished.

  PC

  SEÁN Ó RÍORDÁIN

  (1917–77)

  Switch

  ‘Come here,’ said Turnbull, ‘till you see the sadness

  In the horse’s eyes,

  If you had such big hooves under you there’d be sadness

  In your eyes too.’

  It was clear that he understood so well the sadness

  In the horse’s eyes,

  And had pondered it so long that in the end he’d plunged

  Into the horse’s mind.

  I looked at the horse to see the sadness

  Obvious in its eyes,

  And saw Turnbull’s eyes looking in my direction

  From the horse’s head.

  I looked at Turnbull one last time

  And saw on his face

  Outsize eyes that were dumb with sadness –

  The horse’s eyes.

  PC

  Despair

  No dead men will leave the tomb

  to seek out the confines of night or day.

  Abandon your designs on them;

  humble your bare head to the clay.

  Don’t think you can put flesh on a wraith.

  The beautiful was never true.

  I know that My Redeemer lieth.

  No pennies will fall from heaven for you.

  You want a pooka to breathe down your neck,

  and all the heavenly lies he’d spin.

  You’ve settled for the hump on your back;

  don’t let it spread to your brain.

  Amidst your pooka shadowmancy

  find the pooka truth and way.

  Cast a hunchshadow all can see

  and humble your bare head to the clay.

  Make a show of yourself. The critic rates

  the hunchshadowself you hide in

  that once was laid between the sheets

  to kiss while deafness blew from heaven.

  And a gentle hand entombed and rotting,

  a dream in a separate tomb imprisoned,

  the dearest dream, the rarest thing,

  in a deep tomb inside the mind,

  and the black chalice of night drained low,

  and a crooked sleep, tossed left and right,

  while Veronica mopped His brow,

  while the hunchback stripped bare in the night.

  Hypocrite lecteur who read

  the poem I beget on sickness,

  try judging that and then decide

  what failure is and what success.

  David Wheatley

  Claustrophobia

  Next to the wine

  Stand a candle and terror,

  The statue of my Lord

  Bereft of its power;

  What�
�s left of the night

  Is massing in the yard,

  Night’s empire

  Is outside the window;

  If my candle fails

  Despite my efforts

  The night will leap

  Right into my lungs,

  My mind will collapse

  And terror engulf me,

  Taken over by night,

  I’ll be darkness alive:

  But if my candle lasts

  Just this one night

  I’ll be a republic of light

  Until dawn.

  PC

  Fever

  The mountains of the bed are high,

  The sick-valley sultry with heat,

  It’s a long way down to the floor,

  And miles and miles further

  To a world of work and leisure.

  We’re in a land of sheets

  Where chairs have no meaning,

  But there was a time before this levelled time,

  A walking time long ago,

  When we were high as a window.

  The picture on the wall is heaving,

  The frame has liquefied,

  Without faith I can’t hold it at bay,

  Everything’s driving at me

  And I feel the world falling away.

  A whole district’s arriving from the sky,

  A neighbourhood’s set up on my finger,

  Easy now to grab a church –

  There are cows on the northern road

  And the cows of eternity are not so quiet.

  PC

  MÁIRE MHAC AN TSAOI

  (b.1922)

  Mary Hogan’s Quatrains

  I

  If I once got free of this net –

  And God grant that won’t take too long –

  I could maybe live on the memory

  Of the ease I found in your arms.

  When I learn again how to pray,

  Hear Mass and go to Communion,

  Who’ll say then it’s not right

  To storm heaven for you and for me?

  But a bit of advice in the meantime –

  Don’t get too fondly attached;

  For I am intent on breaking

  Every bond there could ever be between us.

  II

  A fig for people’s opinions,

  A fig for the priest’s interdictions,

  For everything but lying stretched

  Between you and the wall –

  The freezing night is nothing,

  And nothing the driving rain

  To the secret world of warmth that spans

  From one side of the bed to the other.

  No need to think of the future

  Nor of what has gone before –

  Now is the hour, dear heart:

  It will last until morning.

  III

  A whole year now I’ve spent

  Stretched beneath your quilt,

  It’s difficult at this stage to say

  What I was hoping to gain!

  Your feet trod all over

  What was given so freely at first,

  While you had never a thought for

  What trampled flesh must endure.

  And still the body submits

  For the sake of an ancient promise,

  But now that the song has been stilled in my heart

  Delight ebbs from our love-making.

  IV

  The child of jealousy is suckling my breast

  – He demands it by day and by night –

  He’s an ugly whelp and he’s cutting his teeth,

  Their grip fills my veins with poison.

  Don’t let the little wretch divide us, love,

  So wholesome and healthy was our mating;

  Skin to skin our union’s guarantee,

  Its seal a hand granted every freedom.

  Look, I’ve no wish to deny affection,

  Even if doubt’s roots have driven deep;

  Don’t force a reliable mare, and she’ll

  Serve you well in the future.

  V

  Pain is a wonderful thing!

  How it wears out the rib-cage,

  And gives no relief nor respite

  By day or night –

  The person in pain like me

  Can never be solitary,

  Carrying an eternal companion

  Like a mother carrying her unborn child.

  VI

  ‘I don’t sleep at night’ –

  An easy boast, but who can measure

  The weight of the night

  On open eyes?

  VII

  How long tonight is!

  There was once a night

  We did not think long –

  If I dare to remember.

  The road I’d follow

  Would be no hard road –

  If return were permitted

  After repentance.

  Lying down for pleasure

  And rising with delight

  Such was our practice –

  If I could only resume it.

  PC

  PEARSE HUTCHINSON

  (b.1927)

  Petition to Release

  for Bert Achong

  And they all go winding assiduously watches –

  tiny, jewelled informers, time-jailers

  (for time walked round, whipped round a prison-yard,

  must find it hard, never achieving oblivion,

  telling the world: Wait! and patting pillows).

  And they all go winding deciduously watches –

  for every twist of the wrist is a leaf loosened,

  a life lessened, a lesson learnt, a letter burnt;

  the tick-talk may gloss across the losing,

  but not the loss. Who can fasten back the leaf?

  relive the life? or forget the lesson?

  or look at the letter unsigned as it puzzled the anguish

  of the angry or penitent lover, while his watch

  muttered warnings of late mornings, the witch?

  I don’t know who the hell could get me to work,

  a black boy goes boasting beside Mayaro Bay.

  They may all go winding aciduously watches,

  but I don’t know who the hell could get me to work,

  for I’m sweet, not bitter – nor the sea to work,

  for it’s strong, not petty. But the princess-pretty

  thoughts you wear, singer, in your soft blue hair

  we share behind our chained wrists and

  our winding, assiduous, bitter, brittle days.

  For someone stupid like a station-master,

  a competent rebel, or a duck-faced emperor,

  invented once in a wicked whoopee

  espionage and prison against our friend –

  el tiempo: amigo mio, nuestro amado.

  And all the little ingredients went winding

  themselves assiduously up, and finding fun.

  Tempus Tyrannus, Tempus Rex,

  only wears a crown upon his soft blue hair

  (to hide it, so that wise-men declare him decrepit)

  when the glass dungeons close out the sun

  and the river and the white white girl with a rose

  in her soft gold hair and the grinning beggar;

  and they all go (the jewelled and brainless jailers),

  winding

  assiduously

  watches

  deciduously

  chuckling.

  RICHARD MURPHY

  (b.1927)

  Sailing to an Island

  The boom above my knees lifts, and the boat

  Drops, and the surge departs, departs, my cheek

  Kissed and rejected, kissed, as the gaff sways

  A tangent, cuts the infinite sky to red

  Maps, and the mast draws eight and eight across

  Measureless blue, the boatmen sing or sleep.

  We point all day for our chosen island,
>
  Clare, with its crags purpled by legend:

  There under castles the hot O’Malleys,

  Daughters of Granuaile, the pirate queen

  Who boarded a Turk with a blunderbuss,

  Comb red hair and assemble cattle.

  Across the shelved Atlantic groundswell

  Plumbed by the sun’s kingfisher rod,

  We sail to locate in sea, earth and stone

  The myth of a shrewd and brutal swordswoman

  Who piously endowed an abbey.

  Seven hours we try against wind and tide,

  Tack and return, making no headway.

  The north wind sticks like a gag in our teeth.

  Encased in a mirage, steam on the water,

  Loosely we coast where hideous rocks jag,

  An acropolis of cormorants, an extinct

  Volcano where spiders spin, a purgatory

  Guarded by hags and bristled with breakers.

  The breeze as we plunge slowly stiffens:

  There are hills of sea between us and land,

  Between our hopes and the island harbour.

  A child vomits. The boat veers and bucks.

  There is no refuge on the gannet’s cliff.

  We are far, far out: the hull is rotten,

  The spars are splitting, the rigging is frayed,

  And our helmsman laughs uncautiously.

  What of those who must earn their living

  On the ribald face of a mad mistress?

  We in holiday fashion know

  This is the boat that belched its crew

  Dead on the shingle in the Cleggan disaster.

  Now she dips, and the sail hits the water.

  She luffs to a squall; is struck; and shudders.

  Someone is shouting. The boom, weak as scissors,

  Has snapped. The boatman is praying.

  Orders thunder and canvas cannonades.

  She smothers in spray. We still have a mast;

  The oar makes a boom. I am told to cut

  Cords out of fishing-lines, fasten the jib.

  Ropes lash my cheeks. Ease! Ease at last:

  She swings to leeward, we can safely run.

  Washed over rails our Clare Island dreams,

  With storm behind us we straddle the wakeful

  Waters that draw us headfast to Inishbofin.

  The bows rock as she overtakes the surge.